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So much has changed for healthcare marketers in the past 14 months. The COVID-19 pandemic has both transformed and put a spotlight on healthcare and pharma, and the marketing landscape can feel almost unrecognizable to what it was just a few years ago.
As unsettling as this upheaval can be, change brings the opportunity to reevaluate—and improve upon—the status quo. Here are three reasons why the time is right for challenger brands in healthcare:
In times of economic churn, challenger brands present opportunities for choice and change. With the status quo in question, there’s a big opportunity for brands to represent something new and different to consumers.
Health, wellness, and choice have been huge topics of conversation ever since the beginning of the pandemic. There’s an opportunity for brands to participate in that dialogue, and educate engaged consumers about their options.
Private-pay is at an all-time high, and health and wellness are top of mind for everyone. These factors have contributed to consumers being more engaged than ever in their healthcare decision-making process.
While the past 14 months have been difficult for everyone (to say the very least), it's clear that the upheaval brought by COVID-19 has created opportunities for healthcare marketers. Challenger brands are particularly poised to ride this wave of change, breaking the “cycle of sameness” within healthcare marketing and reshaping the status quo.
For more insight into the opportunities available to healthcare marketers, check out Vertical Viewpoint: Conquering Challenges as a Healthcare Brand.
Plus, check out our Healthcare in 2021 infographic for more insights about the consumer and market trends driving change this year.
At the Brand Innovators 2021 Media Buying Summit last week, experts from across the industry discussed how the media buying landscape is evolving. They shared, learned, and connected—and covered a lot of ground on topics such as cost constraints, pain points in ad tech, creative messaging in the media world, media plans post-pandemic, the cookieless future, and more.
Centro was proud to sponsor at the event, which was highlighted by our CEO & Founder, Shawn Riegsecker, who led three fireside chats with senior-level marketers hailing from the likes of Hilton, Facebook, and HBO Max.
Check out the key takeaways from each fireside chat below—the sessions are available on-demand, and worth a listen:
Shawn and Rebecca chatted through media planning from a business/leisure travel, as well as global, perspective and what that looks like in terms of creative messaging post-pandemic. Rebecca shared insights on the cost constraints that have come with the heightened complexity within the media space and what it was like to shift from the agency to the brand side, "In terms of advice, I try to over-communicate as best as I can. Context is king – giving the rationale and explanation for what we’re trying to solve for; I invite my agency to be a part of those discussions. I give them permission to ask more questions and work through problems together. It’s more of a partnership."
Shawn and Christine talked through her transition from Mastercard to Facebook and how that presented interesting challenges and a shift in perspective along the way. She spoke about the emotional tie to Facebook and its products, and how the brand is pivoting from an overarching/high-level umbrella brand perspective. Christine talked about how Facebook aims to use the platform for good and shared more details on their promotional initiatives through 2021 and highlighted the most important tactical media and marketing KPIs. Ultimately, Christine stated, “It’s all about the consumer at the end of the day. So if this is a consumer-driven initiative that will improve brand trust, then we’re all about that."
Shawn and Su chatted through her career journey within Warner Brothers and the exciting opportunities and challenges that presented themselves throughout her time there. They also discussed an omnichannel approach to reaching consumers from a media perspective, how first-party data should be defined, the biggest struggles of advertising technology, and what releases are coming down the pipe for HBO Max. What's Su's number one piece of advice on to best reach consumers? "Start with your goals and requirements. If you start with the data and just start doing things, there is so much that can be done—a never-ending list of things that you could do or try to track, etc. That’s why I think every company has a slightly different MarTech or Ad Tech stack—each one is different based on the goals of the company."
Click the links above to catch up on all of the fireside chats from Brand Innovators Media Buying Summit 2021 - you definitely don't want to miss these! For more on how to add automation to your current MarTech or Ad Tech stack, check out our comprehensive tech solution, Basis.
At Centro, we know that keeping up with the trade pubs and latest trends can be tough and time-consuming. To make that easier, we’ve compiled all the articles, reports, and other bits of awesomeness you may have missed, but should definitely read. Enjoy our latest list below!
10 Psych Principles to Attract and Grow Your Audience [:12]
Paid media often drives to owned media, particularly in the B2B space. While content marketing tactics and times change, one thing remains constant – human behavior. This article breaks down 10 ways marketers can attract and convert more of their audience by anchoring their strategy to human psychology.
CMO Tenure Slips to Just 40 Months–the Lowest Average Since 2009 [:03]
According to the new research, the average tenure of chief marketing officers at 100 of the top US ad spenders fell to 40 months last year, down from 41 in the year before and the lowest average since 2009. The report also delivered some good news, with the proportion of female chief marketing officers rising to 47% last year, up from 43% in 2019 and 36% in 2018.
Amazon’s Ad Business Grows 73% To $6.9B In Q1 [:02]
Amazon’s “other” segment, which houses its advertising business, continues its monstrous growth. While Amazon’s ads business grew over the last year due to traffic increases, its ad products have also improved. On its most recent earnings call, video product listings were called out as an area of creativity and growth, as well as the company’s use of deep learning to make ads more relevant to users.
U.S. Now Has More Streaming Subscriptions Than People [:01]
There are now nearly 340 million subscription contracts to OTT streaming services in the U.S., exceeding the country’s 330-million population, according to a new report. The average U.S. consumer subscribes to 4+ subscription VOD services, and one-quarter subscribe to five or more.
In the Roaring Twenties, Ads Make a Comeback {:06]
While digital media executives scrambled to tell their boards about new subscription products last year, something strange happened: Their old advertising businesses exploded as consumers stayed home and shopped online.
Now, travel companies, liquor companies and basically everyone else hoping to capitalize on the marketing dream of a post-pandemic Roaring Twenties economic boom have begun to pour money into advertising on virtually every platform, but digital media most of all.
Confused About Identity? This List of 80 Identity Partners May (Or May Not) Help [:02]
80 identity solutions are vying to fill the void left by third-party cookies, according to analysis by marketing trade group MMA Global and Prohaska Consulting. The solutions providers come from various backgrounds.
Besides the Google-Facebook-Amazon triopoly, the list includes media companies with proprietary identifiers (NBCUniversal, NewsPass ID), DSPs, SSPs, agency-owned data companies (Publicis’ Epsilon, Merkle’s Merkury), TV manufacturers (Vizio, Samsung) and even payment processors (Visa).
Perfect Your iOS 14 Opt-In Strategy with Pre-Permission Prompts Built with Context and Trust [:05]
With ATT, advertisers can continue to receive deterministic attribution data and carry on with segmentation and retargeting efforts—they just need to focus on building customer relationships based on trust. This article offers some practical tips on best practices. Also, see this gallery of App Tracking Transparency (ATT) prompts for inspiration.
First-Party Data Is a Good Start But It’s Not Enough [:02]
First-party data is the lifeblood of any brand’s marketing efforts, and 86% of the marketers surveyed for this year’s Nielsen Annual Marketing Report recognize its importance. But overall confidence in data quality is universally low, with 41% of the marketers at large companies viewing data accuracy as a challenge.
Facebook’s Clubhouse Competitor is Coming This Summer [:03]
Over the next few months, Facebook is going all in on audio. The company announced multiple products that emphasize voice content over text, images, or video. Most notably, Facebook is preparing to launch a competitor to the buzzy social audio app Clubhouse, with a feature called Live Audio Rooms.
Fathom is a full-service marketing agency deeply rooted in digital. They have strong expertise in all areas of marketing and specialize in paid media, SEO, and content development while weaving a thread of analytics through everything they touch.
Fathom has been on Inc.’s list of America’s fastest-growing private companies four times and is a seven-time recipient of AdAge’s Top 25 Search Marketing Agency recognition. They have also been named a top workplace five times by NorthCoast 99.
As a full-service agency, Fathom knew that digital media is a key component of any successful marketing plan. Their digital planning and buying offering was already solid, but the leadership team knew that in order to keep up with the evolving landscape, they needed an ad tech partner that could help Fathom meet their agency’s sophisticated and strategic plans.
Fathom had specific needs for their future digital media ad tech. In addition to an easy-to-use platform, they required:
With Basis, Fathom has been able to retain and grow their digital media business. Client satisfaction is up and campaigns are meeting their goals and KPIs.
Fathom credits the platform’s reach, agility, and transparency for helping them continue to make an impact on their clients’ business.
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Tyler Alge, Director of Digital Strategy at Fathom:
"The way we've positioned the Basis capabilities have contributed heavily to client retention and satisfaction. The reach, agility, and transparency the platform provides have been to key to our success in retaining and growing clients."
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The word "innovative" gets thrown around a lot in ad tech. But what does it really take to consistently deliver innovation that resonates with advertising clients?
Walter Geer shares how he empowers his team to keep innovation at the forefront of approaching client business. He also discusses his passions for mentorship, DEI, and connecting authentically with his growing social media network about important causes.
A growing, multi-location bank brand needed to strategically target prospects to drive application volume in a competitive and saturated market within the industry.
Grow application volume by 25% and improve cost per acquisition by 27% YOY.
The media activation & strategy team's first step was analyzing historical campaign performance to discover optimizations for flighting, partner selection and measurement. Next, audiences and product trends were examined for insights on future strategies. Digital strategies were aligned with traditional efforts to ensure a holistic measurement of their customer journey.
Applications: 130% increase in volume
CPA: 37% reduction in CPA vs. 27% goal
Target Audience: Built target audience based on consumer behavior
Education: Thought leadership prepared the client for future success in programmatic buying
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VP of Marketing, Banking Application
"Partnering with Basis Technologies has allowed us to increase our bandwidth and stay nimble as our organization grows. I like the fact that we have a team of field experts who understand the goals of our business, dedicated to driving digital performance for our company. Their data-driven approach and learnings allow us to make decisions and strategic adjustments with confidence. Basis Technologies is no longer a vendor to us, they truly are a part of our team."
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This is the second in an 11-part series of blog posts that focus on Basis Technologies' corporate guiding principles, and how those values show up in the workplace and in the lives of our people.
I founded Basis Technologies on 11 ideals—or guiding principles—to keep the company and the people in it on the right track as we achieve our business goals. One of the most overarching principles is our commitment to continuous self-improvement and personal growth.
Basis is committed to investing in the growth of our team members, while cultivating a culture of responsibility and accountability for everyone’s own self-development. As I think about my commitment to personal accountability and self-improvement, my DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) journey comes to mind.
Over the last few years, we increased our efforts to be a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace. We have worked to strengthen the communities we work and live in, broaden our recruitment methods, and cultivate an inclusive workforce.
Sadly, our DEI outcomes have not been good enough to net the results we want. We must do more and get better at holding ourselves accountable. This isn’t to say that there has been no improvement. We’ve set goals around recruiting and hiring initiatives, have made investments in furthering opportunities for students from underrepresented groups, and have increased DEI education and resources for our employees.
But these efforts are only a start. Real DEI work requires long term effort and a deep commitment to continuous learning and improvement. As CEO, I’m determined to do what it takes to improve our representation and our eternal commitment to DEI. This begins with my own personal commitment, responsibility and need for self-development. Here are three lessons I’ve learned so far in my DEI journey.
As a CEO, I’m constantly working to educate myself. I’ve committed myself and my executive team to at least 15 hours of education focused around DEI per quarter. Recently we’ve read Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People and How to Be an Inclusive Leader: Your Role in Creating Cultures of Belonging Where Everyone Can Thrive.
Education on why and how diverse representation matters is important. Identify and communicate why diverse teams are important to your company. For example, diverse teams are important for Basis because we’re building an industry-changing product, we’re servicing diverse clients, and we’re building a responsible corporate culture that encourages and values creativity, innovation, and fresh ideas from everyone. We can’t be successful when we think small or with a narrow perspective.
We have work to do on representation. Currently, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) employees make up 16% of Basis team members living in the U.S. Our goal is to almost double this percentage in the next few years.
While BIPOC talent represented 27% of our U.S. new hires in 2020, we need to ensure that these numbers stay high throughout interview stages, hiring, and retention. We’re focusing on broadening where we search for talent as well as improving interviewing training and practices (e.g. blind resume reviewing) that help to address and minimize unconscious biases.
While it’s imperative to set goals, focus on metrics, and track data around representation, it’s important to remember that behind employee demographics and representation metrics are real people. Not only does representation matter to our intellectual, business, and innovation efforts, it also affects the mental and emotional load of what our employees are carrying into the workplace and how they are able to show up for work.
We’ve created a space for authentic conversations from a myriad of voices in a series called Basis Conversations. We're also proud of our employee-created and led Community Groups (Employee Resource Groups) that serve as safe spaces for support, education, and resources. Recently, our Parents Community Group and Black Excellence Community Group hosted a conversation about how to talk to kids about race.
We have more work to do in centering our support and listening to our employees’ experiences and needs. With the increase of violence against the AAPI (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) community, it became clear we need to do better at pausing, listening to, and supporting our AAPI employees. Many of us will never fully understand the daily lived experiences of our employees. We have work to do in educating ourselves about what our teammates are bringing to work and how to best support them.
DEI is in everyone’s best interest and is everyone’s responsibility at Basis Technologies. Studies from McKinsey & Company, Deloitte and Gartner consistently show that diverse teams across many vectors are more successful in meeting their goals and coming up with unique, innovative solutions.
But DEI work doesn’t start and end with recruiting and hiring. We certainly need to recruit diverse candidates, but far from being HR or Recruiting’s responsibility, it's critical managers and colleagues who take on the work of creating inclusive and equitable spaces through hiring and onboarding practices and on their teams every day.
Ensuring we have a diverse workforce is only a first step. The more important step is ensuring everyone has a positive experience and chooses to stay and grow with us. If BIPOC talent, LGBTQ+ community members, or other people within an underrepresented group don’t see, meet and connect with people similar to them within the organization, its difficult to feel included and part of the team.
Ensuring that we’re always showing and proving we care about each team member's growth, happiness and career progression is paramount to our success. This is everyone’s job at Basis.
In this spirit, we are now including an assessment around embracing diversity in every employee’s performance evaluation this year. We’ll be tracking participation in DEI focused trainings and educational opportunities. From here, we will begin linking our leaders’ performance outcomes to meaningful contributions to our DEI strategy and goals.
I look at DEI the same way I look at building an innovative product and platform: approach the issue with a challenger mindset, don’t buy into the way things have always been, and commit to consistent improvement at the macro and micro-level every day.
There’s never a point where we stop after reaching a certain goal—there is only progress. Our DEI work will never be over, even when we reach the initial goals we set for ourselves. It’s vital that we create and maintain a culture where everyone feels comfortable giving candid feedback, sharing experiences openly, and coming up with new and innovative ideas that we can continuously act on.
In addition to working towards progress in our own company microcosm, we need to be cognizant of how Basis can help create paths for underrepresented groups people to break into industries that have struggled to build diverse workforces. Our partnerships with organizations like CodeNation and The Boyd Initiative are small steps in the right direction.
We also must hold ourselves accountable to ensure that we have equality in both compensation and career paths. We have removed historical salary considerations from our interview process and have instituted an annual pay audit to assess parity among different demographics. In previous internal studies, we have done well relative to these metrics, but there are always ways to improve.
We will keep learning, striving for progress, and over-indexing on the amount of support and career investment we provide for our underrepresented groups in the technology and advertising industry. Our mission is to be both leaders and eternal learners in our respective industries to counter historical inequities and ensure we are a colorful and diverse team where everyone feels warmly embraced, included, and equal.
I want to thank the Basis team members whose passion has driven our DEI progress to date, including members of underrepresented groups and our Community Group members.
Digital advertising has come a long way since the first display ad in 1994. And as new technologies have emerged, so has interest in how and why ads are being shown to consumers.
Over the last several years, tracking methodologies that allow advertising technology suppliers to create targeting mechanisms have been subject to increased scrutiny. In response, technology developers and regulatory bodies have taken action in protecting and enforcing users’ right to privacy and choice.
Let’s take a look at some of the privacy-focused steps that tech companies and government bodies have taken over the past several years, building up to the expected “death” of third-party cookies by 2022:
In 2018, Mozilla released Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP), a setting of Firefox 63 that allows users to block third-party cookies. A year later, the company made changes so ETP would only block known trackers and not all cookies—Mozilla found that blocking all cookies “leads to scenarios where some websites may not function properly." They took this modified approach to prevent “potential usability issues,” and users who preferred more protection and privacy could change the tracking settings from the default “standard” to “strict.”
Microsoft soon followed suit, and in 2019 introduced Microsoft Tracking Prevention (MTP). Like Mozilla’s ETP, MTP offers users multiple protection levels: Basic, Balanced (the recommended/default option), and Strict. MTP blocks third-party cookies from known tracking sites and, in strict mode, blocks calls to those sites. But unlike ETP, Microsoft does not offer a custom mode, and doesn’t behave differently between InPrivate or normal browsing.
And then, of course, there is Apple. With the release of Safari 13.1 in March 2020 and through updates to its Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) privacy feature, Apple now blocks all third-party cookies in Safari by default. John Wilander, Security & Privacy Engineer at WebKit (Apple), explained that users were unlikely to notice any changes because ITP had already been doing some of this for several years. “It might seem like a bigger change than it is,” Wilander said, “but we’ve added so many restrictions to ITP since its initial release in 2017 that we are now at a place where most third-party cookies are already blocked in Safari.”
And with the release of iOS 14, Apple now gives users a prompt to opt-out of tracking, thus reducing the availability of the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFAs), a random device identifier assigned by Apple to a user's device. Advertisers have used this to track data so they can deliver customized advertising. The April 2021 release of iOS 14.5, specifically, brought with it a new privacy framework called App Tracking Transparency (ATT), which gives users more insight into how their data is used, how their online activity is tracked, and introduces an "opt in" environment on the iPhone when it comes to cross-app tracking.
Browsers aren’t the only bodies who've been reacting to users’ demands for increased privacy controls—governments in Europe and North America have been developing laws to protect consumer’s data. North America started with an opt-out approach, whereas Europe's stance has been stricter with an opt-in system.
In 2016, the European Union approved the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which was put into effect in May 2018. The regulation governs the collection and processing of personal data of European member state citizens. Under GDPR, personal data that is used to offer goods and services, or to profile users, can only be collected for explicit, specified purposes, and the processing of that data must be compatible with those same purposes.
There are only a few very specific legal bases for processing personal data—most notably, through the consent of the data subject. In addition, data subjects have very broad rights, including the right to transparent information about the data collection and processing, the right to be forgotten (erasure of data), the right to object, and others.
The intention of the regulation is to give data subjects more control over their personal data: who can use it, how it is used, who it can be shared with, etc. All companies that interact with European end-users are obligated to comply with this law, regardless of that companies’ geographic location. As a result, advertisers need to ensure that their advertising activities are lawful under the GDPR when targeting EU member states in their campaigns. Advertisers that collect and process personal data, and who have determined that their activities fall within GDPR’s scope, need to be certain they have a valid legal basis (such as user consent) for doing so.
Privacy regulations have also come to the US—notably, when the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) was signed into law in June 2018 and became effective in 2020. CCPA gives California residents new rights regarding their data, including the right to know what personal information a business collects about them and how it is used and shared; the right to delete personal information collected from them (with some exceptions); the right to opt-out of the sale of their personal information; and the right to non-discrimination for exercising their CCPA rights.
Building upon the CCPA right to request access to the personal information a business has collected about a person in the preceding 12-month period, the forthcoming California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) expands this to include any information collected—regardless of when it was collected—unless doing so proves impossible or would involve a disproportionate effort. CPRA goes into effect January 2023, so the clock is ticking.
For digital marketers, these steps have led to a particular reckoning: how to operate after the death of the third-party cookie.
A third-party cookie, for the uninitiated or less-than-tech savvy, is a piece of code set by a website other than the one a user is currently on. This snippet of code is primarily used to identify and track visitors between websites and display more relevant ads.
These cookies have helped media buyers execute targeting tactics so their ads are shown to the right person, in the right environment, at the right time—via audience targeting, retargeting, geo-based retargeting, cross-device targeting and tracking, and frequency capping. Additionally, cookies have facilitated a variety of attribution measurements, such as foot traffic/walk-ins, app installs, and conversions via click-through and view-through.
So, what does the demise of the third-party cookie mean for digital marketers, and how should they proceed moving forward? Check out Centro’s guide, “Embracing the Identity Crisis,” to learn more about some of the potential solutions and to see why, in the words of Centro Founder & CEO Shawn Riegsecker, this is in fact "an opportunity” for the advertising industry.
Consumers shifted from traditional media to digital media swiftly in 2020—and the data shows that this trend is set to stick around. Download the infographic below to view the average time U.S. adults spend with digital media and online trends that are here to stay.